


Take my breath away

by nivu_vu, SwiftRiver



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Bad Things Happen To Carlos, Bad Things Happen To Cecil, Cecil is Inhuman, Drinking, Fluff, Kidnapping, M/M, Meet the Family, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Torture, aint no crying in the club
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12700608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nivu_vu/pseuds/nivu_vu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwiftRiver/pseuds/SwiftRiver
Summary: Hmm, he thought,coming to the city with Cecil was a great idea. He sipped from the glass, hmm-ing again as the drink burned down his throat and settled in his stomach, a bit more bitter than he had anticipated.---Carlos gets invited to a Science convention outside of Night Vale. Cecil decides to join him. After several drinks, they find themselves waking up locked in unfamilliar cells with the other nowhere to be seen.orEverything's fun and games during a night out on the town with your husband, until you wake up in a cell.





	1. Terminal Velocity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The warnings, ratings, and tags for this fic will get updated as the story develops, as we did not want to reveal too much too early.
> 
> On that note, specific warnings for each chapter will be included in the END NOTES, so please take a look at those first if you are feeling unsure. Or if you want to experience the story blind, then go for it! Just keep in mind that the ratings and warnings _will_ change as we add more chapters.

Carlos hadn’t missed this city in the slightest. Around him, he saw more sky _scraper_ than sky itself; an unwelcome change, after being surrounded by the oppressively hot sun and the oppressively terrifying void for so long. He already wished he was back home.

He looked over at Cecil, who was staring up at the buildings like they were mountains - which, for him, they might as well have been. Cecil had insisted on helping Carlos drive, and while Carlos was thankful for the offer, he had politely refused and herded Cecil towards the passenger seat. Carlos trusted Cecil with his life, but he knew there were times Cecil should _not_ be in charge of one. He still remembered that hamster, who had had so much going for it.

“Wow!! Carlos!! Everything’s so pretty. It makes sense that someone as perfect as you came from here,” Cecil had gushed.

In that moment, Carlos knew just how out of his depth Cecil was. From the trash on the streets to the uncaring strangers, this never felt like home. But then, he guessed as the spires of buildings gave way to two-story houses and then single-story houses, there were other reasons that this place never felt like home.

Parallel parking - which was _legal_ outside of Night Vale, he reminded himself - on the sidewalk in front of the unassuming brown house, Carlos took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He could do this. He was a _Scientist_.

He nudged the shoulder of his husband who had dozed off during the trip. “We’re here,” Carlos said. He tried to not sound defeated. From the concerned look on Cecil’s drowsy face, he hadn’t been successful.

Cecil asked, “Are you ready?”

“Nope,” he sighed. “Let’s do it.”

Cecil reached over and squeezed Carlos’s hand, looked into his eyes and smiled. He assured Carlos, “It’s going to be alright.”

Carlos managed a weak smile in return, and reached up to rub his thumb on Cecil’s forehead. His thumb tingled in response to the suppressed energy gathered due to Cecil’s hidden Eye. He then turned to duck out of the car. Behind him, he heard Cecil open the car door and knew he was stepping out as well.

The walk to the front door couldn’t have been longer. _Be calm,_ he told himself as he braced himself in front of the door and adjusted his tie. _Just be calm._ A quick look back showed that Cecil had taken a liking to one of the garden shrubs and was leaning down to talk to it. Or maybe he was just checking for secret police. Cecil, feeling his gaze, looked up, flashed another smile, and bounded over to his side, where he stood close, but not touching.

Carlos raised his hand and pressed the doorbell.

There was a clatter from inside, and the sound of footsteps approaching the door. He fixed his posture out of habit, straightened his back, squared his shoulders. Cecil fidgeted with one of his sleeves - he was wearing one of his least colorful dress shirt, lime green with blue sailboats. Carlos thought it looked good on him, but seeing Cecil without his usual minimum of four blaring colors felt like something was off.

The door swung open to reveal a middle aged woman with graying hair.

“Oh,” Carlos’s sister said. “It’s you.” She turned around and stalked back inside the house.

Carlos sighed. He had not expected any less. Beside him, Cecil made a soft noise of disapproval, but otherwise remained silent.

“Home, sweet home,” Carlos muttered, and gestured for Cecil to get in, closing the door quietly after him. Normally he would have avoided the place at all costs, but his science convention had been located right next to his hometown, and Cecil had been curious. Carlos loved Cecil too much to say no to his curious face, and even secretly hoped that maybe, just maybe, his family members had changed while he was away.

The disapproving to outright hostile stares that greeted them when they turned the corner into the dining room told Carlos that he had hoped wrong.

“You’re late,” his sister commented from the table. She was seven years younger than him, and their relationship had been strained at best, even before he had apparently disappeared from outside of Night Vale for decades. Now, Carlos looked at least ten years younger than her, landing him in a mess of suspicious glances and disbelief every time he felt the obligation to visit.  

His nieces, teenage twins, had only seen him about twice in their lives. The last time they saw him was at his mother’s funeral - not the best time to introduce anyone’s long-lost uncle. And this was definitely the first time they had seen Cecil. They stared openly at Cecil as he walked in behind Carlos and twirled on his heels, trying to take in as much of Carlos’s childhood house as he could.

Carlos walked towards the two empty chairs placed near the end of the table and pulled one out for Cecil to take. “Traffic,” he said, and sat down himself. The food was already laid out on the table, and his father and brother-in-law had already started to eat. Before he could say another word, his father interrupted him.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?” he barked, waving his fork at him.

Carlos turned to glance at Cecil. Cecil nodded at him. They had agreed beforehand what to tell his family.

“Oh, well. Everyone, this is my, ah, my boyfriend, Cecil Palmer. Cecil, this is my family.”

His husband smiled brightly and stuck out a hand towards the general direction of Carlos’s father.

“Hello, it is nice to meet you!” he said, as they had rehearsed. Carlos’s father reached out warily to take the proffered handshake while his brother-in-law glanced at Cecil’s shirt. His nieces stared at Cecil’s teeth.

“And where did you say you met this friend of yours?” Carlos’s father asked, directing his question to Carlos. Cecil had started poking at the plate in front of him. A quick glance told him that it was baked potatoes and greens, and Carlos trusted Cecil to be able to deal with potatoes, even if they, unlike in Night Vale, did not have actual eyes.

Carlos picked up his fork and stabbed it, maybe a little too viciously, into his potato.

“He works as the local radio host for Night Vale, where I live.”

His father grunted in reply, and his sister butted in. “And you’ve been there for, what, fifteen years now?”

Carlos’s knife cut into his potato.

“Seven, actually.”

She made a disbelieving noise. His father spoke once more.

“Well, then. Don’t you think it’s time for you to find a girl, settle down, lead a stable life? I don’t even know _what_ you’ve been doing for the years you didn’t even try to contact us but-”

He was interrupted by a sharp clang as Cecil’s knife rapped against his plate. Cecil looked up from his plate, where he had carved his potato into perfect tetrahedrons, and said, “Carlos has been doing fantastic Science for the seven years he’s lived in Night Vale!” Then he reached over and started pouring pepper onto his potato slices.

Carlos’s father looked miffed. Carlos was not sure if he should reach out and stop the pepper barrage or not.

Apparently deciding that he was done dealing with Carlos, his father turned to address his sister. Cecil’s eyes glittered at Carlos, and Carlos mouthed a silent _thank you_ to his husband. Cecil winked, forked one of his pepper potato pieces, and popped it in his mouth. His face turned a strange shade of puce and his eyes crinkled up but he continued to chew, nodding slowly as if to show his approval. Carlos stifled a laugh as he pushed Cecil’s cup of water closer to him.

“Next time, try toning down the pepper,” he murmured, as Cecil gratefully gulped down the water.

“Carlos, you smart scientist! You always know what to do,” Cecil eventually gasped out.

Carlos wanted nothing more than to be able to run his fingers down Cecil’s cheek right then, but he had to wait until they were out of this house. He really did not want Cecil to see his family at their worst.

Cecil gave him a thumbs up, eyes still watering from his potatoes. Carlos took his now-empty cup, stood up, and said, “I’ll go get you some more water.”

As he made his way around to the water jug laid on the kitchen counter, his father’s hand snaked out and grabbed his wrist. Carlos jumped and tried to pull his arm back, but the hand refused to let go.

A disapproving noise from his father. “What do you even do with your time, boy? You haven’t got an ounce of muscle on your body.”

Carlos tugged once more at his wrist, sharply, and his father finally let go of him. He realized he was shaking.

“Excuse me,” he stammered, and stumbled out of the dining area and into the living room. He heard soft footsteps padding after him and knew that Cecil had followed him. He stood in front of the big window that opened into the yard, only then noticing that he was still holding the empty cup. He gripped it with both hands to stop them from shaking. His wrist hurt.

Cecil stopped near him, and Carlos leaned his shoulder against Cecil’s.

“Hey, boo,” he sighed.

Cecil reached to take the empty cup from him. “Hey, bunny,” Cecil said. “We can leave soon if you want. I think I’m done experiencing your family’s cooking.”

“But you came all the way out here, and…”

Cecil rubbed soothing circles on the small of his back. “I’m not happy if you are not, my dear Carlos. As much as I am still... curious about your family dynamics, I don’t want you to suffer through any more of this. Maybe we can go bar hopping, loosen up before booking one of those ratty motels you were complaining about?”

Carlos made a face. Those motels were dirty _at best_ , and most of them probably did not even have HBO. And then he sighed and let some of the tension bleed out from his shoulders. “You know me too well, honey. But only if you let me keep track of what you’re drinking. Sometimes you go a bit... Overboard.”

Cecil grinned, made a finger gun with his hand and said, “You got it, babe.” The other hand was still holding the empty cup.

“Just one more night, and we’ll be back home in no time.”

Carlos smiled at him, and straightened up. He certainly hoped so.

 

* * *

 

They managed to leave the house within the following hour, but it was not without Carlos eventually having a screaming match with his father and storming out into his car. He sat there fuming for a while as Cecil clenched and unclenched his fists in the passenger seat, lowly reciting different ways he could make a human being unable to walk. It was morbid, yes, but strangely soothing to Carlos. After a while, he sighed and stopped rubbing at his temples to start up his car. Cecil stopped his chanting as well and turned to watch Carlos as he eased out of the driveway.

He clasped his hands together and said, “So.”

“So,” Carlos repeated, keeping his eyes on the road.

Cecil kept looking at Carlos expectantly. “So. Where are you taking me? I’ve never been to a bar in a big city before. Ooh! Maybe there are going to be bartenders who actually _look_ at you when you walk in? This is so exciting!”

Carlos couldn’t help but smile slightly, and Cecil looked blissful, as if the angels had come and blessed the interior of the car themselves.

“Well-” Carlos started, dragging on the word and glancing at Cecil to gauge his reaction. Cecil was literally vibrating in his seat in anticipation. “I was thinking, maybe we could start looking for a place near where we had the convention. It’s a pretty busy area so there will be plenty of people around, looking for places to wind down. And wherever there’s a demand, there’s going to be a supply.”

And Cecil, lovely Cecil, smiled that smile full of adoration and love and teeth, and Carlos felt a similar grin - Cecil had called it _perfect_ once, long ago, when this all began - blossom onto his face as well.

The first bar they found was dimly lit and decorated with books jammed along the entirety of its walls. Carlos would have found it soothing if he had come across it just a few years ago, but now it reminded him too much of a library for him to completely relax. Cecil seemed to have similar thoughts as he nervously sipped at his drink of choice- the one with the highest alcohol percentage from the menu. Carlos vowed to keep a careful tally to avoid any repeat of the Incident last month when Cecil drank too much and started to quite literally float away into the air. It took nine people and two step ladders to get him down low enough to anchor him to the ground.

After just one drink, they closed their tab and left the premises in search of somewhere new.

Carlos did not want to risk it, so they ended up leaving the car in the lot to walk around for the next place. This one was a bit too loud and filled with too many people for Carlos’s tastes, but the flashing neon lights seemed to fascinate Cecil so he decided to stay for a bit longer.

Cecil said something.

“What??” Carlos yelled back.

It looked like Cecil was yelling something again, but Carlos couldn’t make out what he was saying. He cupped his hands around his ear to indicate such.

Cecil leaned in, pecked his cheek, and pointed towards the dance floor, grinning broadly.

“Go, I’ll keep an eye on you!” Carlos shouted back, giving Cecil a double thumbs up. In return, Cecil pointed at his forehead where his incorporeal third Eye winked at him, and bounded onto the dance floor. He returned three songs later, sweating and sipping from a different cup than what he had been holding. Carlos frowned and pointed at the cup.

“Where did you get that?”

Cecil pointed across the dance floor, and sure enough, there was another bartender at the far side of the area. Relieved, Carlos downed the rest of his drink in one go - a bad habit - and signalled to Cecil that he was ready to leave. Cecil gave him a thumbs up, downed his own drink, and came over to slide an arm around Carlos’s waist. Together, they both wound their way out the crowded room, both stumbling slightly now.

By the time they were crashing down the steps of the third bar they had discovered that night, Carlos was definitely more drunk than he had anticipated. He was grinning stupidly and leaning into Cecil as his husband - his lovely, beautiful husband - lead them both to a bar seat, where the people already sitting there moved apart to give them two adjacent chairs. This place was just _perfect_ , with just the _right_ amount of people, and just the _right_ volume of music. Carlos closed his eyes and just let himself sway along to the beat. He heard Cecil order drinks for the both of them, something light and fruity for him, and the strongest one on the list for himself.

He opened his eyes and reached over to touch Cecil’s arm. Cecil turned towards him without hesitation. Carlos opened his mouth.

“I love you,” he mouthed, almost reverently. He could see Cecil’s breath rush out.

Cecil leaned in close to put their foreheads together. His hands rose to cup Carlos’s face.

“I love you,” Carlos repeated, “Thank you so much for coming here with me.”

He could feel Cecil’s breath tickling his nose and mouth. He heard Cecil Say with his Voice, and felt it traveling through their skulls, reverberating and echoing and _true_ :

“Love, you mean the world to me. I will bear the weight of the whole Universe for you.”  

Carlos giggled. He felt giddy. Loved _._

“That’s not fair,” he protested weakly, and he could feel Cecil’s forehead moving, could smell the alcohol from his breath, could see his shoulders hitching as he laughed. Cecil drew back and placed a kiss onto Carlos’s forehead.

“I’ll be back, my lovely Carlos, to my regularly scheduled affectionate touches - after a quick bathroom break!”

Carlos couldn’t help it - he burst out laughing, full belly laughs that made tears pool in his eyes. Cecil grinned and took off, skipping, towards the bathroom signs on the other side of the club.

Still feeling the declaration of love fizzing through his veins - or was it just the alcohol? - Carlos turned to face the bar again and picked up the glass that was placed in front of him. _Hmm,_ he thought, _coming to the city with Cecil was a great idea_. He sipped from the glass, hmm-ing again as the drink burned down his throat and settled in his stomach, a bit more bitter than he had anticipated.

“Excuse me,” a man who was sitting next to him suddenly asked him. “Aren’t you the scientist from the convention earlier today?”

Carlos turned to face the man.

“I- I apologize, do I know you?” Carlos had no idea who this was. But apparently he was at the science convention earlier to recognize him, so maybe this was a fellow Scientist.

Cecil chose that moment to bound back from his impromptu bathroom break.

“Carlos!” He reached the bar in three strides, took the cup sitting in front of his seat, downed it in one gulp ( _“Hey!”_ ) and reached out a hand for Carlos to take. Carlos only had a chance to make an apologetic expression at his neighbor before he let himself be pulled out to the dance floor. _Oh well_ , he thought. _If he really wanted to talk, he would still be there when he got back_.

They danced. They held each other close and swayed to the music. They leaned their heads onto each other’s shoulders, and Carlos could feel all the stress from the day melting away. And he was happy. Content.

He felt his knees give way from under him.

Suddenly, his ears were ringing. He realized he was collapsed on the ground, and he didn’t know how he got there. He saw Cecil’s panicked face above him and tried to reach up to comfort him, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t lift his arms. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but it refused to come out. His head felt like somebody was plugging the inside of his skull with cotton balls; all his thoughts started, then scattered like scared little insects before he could connect anything together.

He saw somebody approach Cecil, say something to him. Cecil nodded, and reached down to lift Carlos up. The last thing Carlos remembered seeing before everything became blank was Cecil’s terrified face leaning over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter: homophobia, getting drugged at a club


	2. Terminal Velocity II

One moment he was _Not,_ then he _Was_. Cecil was not used to waking up like that - he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so deeply unconscious. Nor was he used to waking up alone.

Which he was.

Alone.

Where was he? Where was _Carlos_? The last thing he remembered was-

He breathed hard through his nose, trying to control his panic. _Slow down, Cecil,_ he told himself. Carlos wouldn’t want him to make rash decisions and fall into a deeper rut.

What would Carlos do?

Carlos would act like a scientist and observe his surroundings.

Cecil observed his surroundings.

He observed: He was in a room so brightly white he had a hard time discerning where the walls met the floor. The only things that were truly discernible were him, the meager prison-like bathroom facilities to the wall on his left, and Carlos’s lab coat, which had been draped over him. The room was cold, even for him, though that may have been related to the fact that he was alone - lonely. He was alone often, in his booth at work, and in general people were often alone.

But being without Carlos was different.

_Focus,_ he told himself again. He focused.

Cecil sat up, because he’d been laying down, and looked around, looked behind, looked up - it was all one blank, white canvas. There wasn’t even a door.

He stood up, because he was no longer comfortable waiting for whatever the owners of this room had in store for him, and approached the wall opposite of where he’d woken up. As he walked along that wall, letting his fingers slide along it, he felt that there actually was a door, on the left of where he’d started. He could feel its faint seams, and he wondered when someone would open it. That was what you did with doors - you opened them. Occasionally you walked through them, and more infrequently, you came back out of them.

Cecil assumed that this particular door had been opened for him and that he’d come through it somehow. What he wanted to know now was how to return through it.

He had a complicated relationship with doors, and this door wasn’t changing that.

It refused to open for him, even as he prodded at it for what felt like hours. It might as well have been actually hours, especially without his working watch with him anymore. The insubstantiality of his existence in this cube made time feel even more like a false construct than it normally was, which was saying a lot.

He eventually found himself sliding, back on the door, to the smooth floor. Every surface in this room was smooth.

This was the void. This _had_ to be the void.

He never imagined it to be so, well, bright. Nor solid. But this inescapable space was sucking everything out of him, and so it had to be the void.

No, that was just _dumb_.

This was most likely something devised by the Sheriff’s Secret Police, and he needn’t worry. He just had to wait for his municipal overlords to follow through with their duties so he could go on his way. This wouldn’t be the first time a random person had been whisked away like this.

But then no, not like this. This place held a different malevolence than the one he’d grown comfortable with as protection back home.

Plus, the collar around his neck was not the one he was used to.

There was something else he hadn’t tried yet, mostly because he didn’t want to accidentally spy on someone - that’d be rude. However, this room was unpleasant enough that whoever’s privacy he might invade would have to forgive him.

Cecil took a breath and Looked-

At nothing.

He saw nothing.

There was nothing, except the room in front of him. That wasn’t right. Something like this hadn’t happened in ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| years.

And now that he was concentrating, he realized he couldn’t feel his Eye at all.

His hands flew up to rub at his forehead, where he felt - nothing. Not even a tingle.

He was all alone in this physical void, and he was Blind.

 

* * *

 

Carlos jerked back to consciousness in a disoriented mess. His eyes snapped open, and then screwed back shut immediately - he had a splitting migraine. His back was messing him up more than usual and his head hurt from being placed on a hard surface for so long. Maybe he had fallen asleep on one of his lab counters again. He muttered a curse under his breath, then hoped none of his fellow scientists had been around to hear that. He also hoped he had the decency last night to remember to text Cecil before he passed out.

He groped blindly around for his cell phone, hit hard wall, and recoiled as if he had touched scalding water.

Something was not right.

Carlos rolled over - that was another thing, he had been lying on his back and not slumped over the table like he had thought - and pried open his eyes again. He was lying on his side in a dark, cramped room that he did not recognize at all. Patting himself down, he found his glasses in his pants pocket and put them on. Immediately, things came more into focus.

The walls were made out of what he guessed were grey concrete, with a door with no handle on one side. A part of the door and the wall it was fitted into had a reflective surface that he was almost certain was a two-way mirror. The lower half of the door had a rectangular indent the size of his head. And in a corner opposite of the door, he could see a blinking light - a camera. Anybody who lived in Night Vale knew how to recognize surveillance cameras anywhere.

He had no idea how he got here, and when he frantically tried to remember what exactly had happened last night, he kept drawing a blank. That was what scared him the most. He hoped Cecil was okay.

Carlos got to his knees and stood up - assuming a higher posture made him feel less vulnerable. Plus, the floor was sapping at his body heat. He had to assume that if he showed signs of wakefulness, somebody would come to talk to him. At least give him an explanation, what they gained by trapping him.

Walking over to the door, he tried pushing on it. It didn’t budge, and Carlos quite honestly hadn't expected it to. He leaned on the two-way mirror and cupped his hands over his eyes, trying to see if he could look through it. It just reflected his face back at him, drawn tight and worried.

He started to pace, rubbing on his arms to warm them up. They had taken away his lab coat, leaving him in just a plain t-shirt and jeans. It took four paces to cross the length of the room, three for the shorter side. _It would be five for the diagonal_ , his mind automatically supplied, and indeed it was. He kept pacing diagonally for a while, because five was an easier number to keep track of.  

After a hundred rounds of pacing and five hundred steps, he finally caved and started banging on the door.

“Hello!” he shouted, hoping somebody was around to hear him. “Let me out, I need to go to the bathroom!” It was not entirely a lie.

After what felt like hours, there was a sound of rattling keys and a lock clicking open. Carlos stepped back as the handleless door swung open to reveal an expressionless man in a featureless uniform. Carlos squared his shoulders and took care to meet the man’s gaze head-on, to show that he was not intimidated.

“I - hey!”

He was cut off as the man walked forward, grabbed his arm, and started marching him forward. All Carlos could do was to stumble after him and do his best to remember as much detail as possible.

The walls outside were the same dingy gray as his cell, and their footsteps echoed off the long corridor as they walked forward. There were more doors and two-way mirrors set into the wall, and Carlos didn’t know if he was relieved or unnerved to see that they were all empty. They turned left, right, then left again, and he was pushed into a small tiled room that contained one toilet and a sink. It had no door.

Living in Night Vale for so long had mostly trained him out of feeling self-conscious about doing private things while knowing that somebody was watching. However, knowing that there was somebody monitoring his bathroom activities through a hidden camera, and having a stranger who had just manhandled him into the room breathe down his neck while he awkwardly fumbled with his pants was a little different.

He did not want to get used to this.

After he reached down to flush the toilet, the guard grabbed his arm again and pushed him out of the small bathroom.

No, he definitely did not want to get used to this.

He tried to talk to the guard, asking, “What is this place?” and,  “Why am I here?” and “Where is Cecil?”, but the guard said nothing,didn't even turn to look at him. They took the same way back to his cell - right, left, right -  and Carlos was shoved unceremoniously through the door. The door was locked again with a jingle of keys, and Carlos slid down to sit with his back against a wall, keeping the door on his right line of sight.

His arm hurt.

Eventually, the indent on the bottom of the door slid open, and a plate of food was pushed through. The plate contained a hunk of bread and a glass of water, which he eyed suspiciously. He did not make a move to grab them; he didn’t know who was keeping him here or why they were doing so, but he was not about to trust them with anything that would get ingested into his system.

Carlos leaned his head against his knees and sighed. He hoped Cecil was okay.

 

* * *

 

Cecil was not okay.

The clothes he’d woken up in were of the blandest colors he’d ever seen, and while this wasn’t the worst part of his situation, he was somewhat offended.

The worst part was definitely the fact that he was trapped somewhere that did _not_ belong to his government. And Carlos was still gone.

Cecil hugged Carlos’s lab coat around himself tighter. It still smelled like him, and that was all Cecil could truly cling onto. It’d been five hours now that he’d sat in the corner he’d woken up in. His throat was tight as he attempted to not _say_ anything. He was viciously suppressing his instinct to talk and talk, because who knew who owned this place. He didn’t want to risk saying something he didn’t want them to know.

But it gnawed at his self-control, and he was worried that the next time he opened his mouth he would just scream.

And Carlos was gone. Carlos was gone, and Cecil had his lab coat. It didn’t smell of any blood or gunpowder - thank the gods - but that still left a variety of awful things that could have happened, and Cecil was nothing if not a theorycrafter. Or rather, Carlos was a theorycrafter, and Cecil was constantly consumed by a never-ending barrage of “what if”s and “no please not that”s. The former generally devolved into the latter given enough time and silence, two things that Cecil was in great supply of right now. The scale had definitely tipped towards debilitating fear in the last forty minutes and had no sign of stopping.

He stayed like that, or getting worse from that, for some time before the door slid open to a woman in an honest lab coat. She wore a surgical mask over her face and carried a clipboard in one hand.

Now, Cecil had a predisposition for people in lab coats. He was aware of this bias, and adjusted his opinion accordingly: This person, despite her trustworthy clothing, was _not_ to be trusted.

“Follow me,” she said.

But alright, what was he _supposed_ to do? He couldn’t very well sit in this hell chamber for all of eternity. Cecil followed her.

The darkness of the hallway seemed all the more overwhelming after the room he’d been trapped in for what had to have been hours.

“Twenty minutes since consciousness,” the woman noted into her clipboard as she continued to lead him through the dark.

Cecil blinked. _Oh._

By the time they reached their destination, his eyes had adjusted slightly, but his Eye was still gone. Their destination was a room almost like one he’d see in a normal clinic back home, only much more spacious and without the blood stains and jagged shards of bones. An examination table sat in the middle of the room, while scientific-looking machines and important-looking containers lined the walls and cabinets.It was all very neat, but Cecil was still wary.

However scientific it might appear, the room lacked the warmth he had grown to associate with labs. There was no enjoyment in exploration here, no jubilation that came with discovery, and that deeply unsettled him. A lab without love was nothing more than a waiting maw in a dungeon, ready to methodically devour what came to it and regurgitate the indigestible remains. A lab without love just- well, it just made him long for Carlos even worse.

The woman gestured to the table and said, shortly, “Lay down.”

Cecil sat down on the edge of the table. Laying down required a little too much trust he didn’t have at the moment. He said, “Pardon me for asking, but I was wondering if you could tell me what I’m doing here.”

The woman, who was facing a counter and doing something Cecil wished he could see, ignored him.

“Um,” Cecil said intelligently.

She came to the table rolling a cart of unsharp instruments. This, again, was normal check up stuff, right?

“Lay down,” she repeated.

As she was much closer to him now, he was able to see that she had earplugs on. So _that_ was why she didn’t hear him.

Either way, he wasn’t so inclined to lay down and make himself even more vulnerable. Cecil was fragile, and he didn’t want anyone taking advantage of that.

The woman didn’t appear to care that he remained sitting. In fact, she hardly seemed to show any emotional reaction at all. She could’ve been a robot, for all he knew.

She moved on despite his insubordination, and Cecil let her. He was mildly (okay, _very_ ) intrigued by what she was doing, as he never really had much experience with the doctors. He had certain things he knew he needed from the doctors and didn’t bother much with them outside of that. This meant that the last person who had done something like this for him was Carlos, back when they were “experimenting” with things.

In fact, after she’d used everything on the top layer of the cart, she even told Cecil to take off all his clothes just like Carlos- wait, _what_?

Something told him that stripping was _not_ part of regular routine. Mostly because when Carlos had asked the same thing, it’d led to things that Cecil did not particularly want to engage in with this strange woman and her godless eyes.

Cecil didn’t move, and the woman held up a pair of scissors.

“I will remove your clothing for you if you do not comply,” she stated matter-of-factly.

Those scissors were definitely not going to go anywhere near his skin, so he obliged, shucking off his loose shirt first, then his pants - he had not been wearing _anything_ else upon waking up in the other room. There he stood, awkwardly crossing his arms over his chest and trying not to make eye contact with the woman blatantly staring at his genitalia, as if she’d never seen a Normal Human Dick before. Maybe she hadn’t, in person - he wasn’t going to judge her, but surely a Scientist would’ve encountered one in diagrams.

Yet she stared.

And stared.

_And stared_.

And then finally she jotted something rapidly onto a clipboard.

Was she being racist? Cecil huffed. He didn’t want to assume such lowly things of a stranger, but he’d also run into enough people who’d held prejudices from his physical features alone that he couldn’t put this assumption out of the cards.

She told him to hold his arms out to his sides next and proceeded to take measurements of everything. And Cecil was sure that she took a measurement of _everything_ (rude). This whole experience of tape measurers along every bit and part and lights shining into various orifices was nothing but rude and invasive, and he really wanted his clothes back.

After two hours (“Physical examination duration: forty minutes.”) of this violation of privacy, Cecil was allowed to put his clothes back on and sit on the table again.

The woman pulled two boxes up from the middle layer of her cart. Smoothly, she knotted a rubber tie about his upper arm, and locating his vein, stuck a needle into it. Cecil was glad that Carlos had helped him get over his fear of needles, because there were a multitude of vials standing ready for her to fill with his blood. As she started to fill the first of it, he remembered once telling his listeners, " _Be wary of empty syringes._ Don’t _be wary of syringes filled with unknown liquids._ " However, in this moment, he was glad this syringe was empty and drawing instead of full and injecting.

Too many vials later, she held a piece of gauze over the puncture as she drew the needle away.  Putting the needle down, she took his other hand and placed it on the gauze as she turned halfway towards the cart.

Cecil couldn’t help but peek underneath the gauze. The wound had healed already, so he just let both his arms fall to his sides. Apparently, that was not what the woman had expected to see upon turning back to him. She was showing _surprise_ in the arch of her eyebrows, the first emotion she’d shown yet.

She grabbed his arm and stared for a good minute at where the puncture wound had been moments ago.

“Is there something wrong?” Cecil asked. “And, er, could you possibly explain what I’m doing here?” He hoped he didn’t sound impatient. He wouldn’t want to set off someone in a lab coat, as lab-coated people were deceptively powerful. But then again, he couldn’t exactly sound like anything to her with those earplugs on.

The woman dropped his arm and, instead of the clipboard, hurriedly scribbled some notes onto a notepad she pulled out of her coat.

Cecil sat and waited. He could wait. There was that time the government had abducted him and made him sit on the modified dentist’s chair for a good three hours while they scanned him for any recent thought crimes. This was not nearly as bad.

Eventually, the woman slipped the notepad and pen back into her pockets, her solemn face once more in place. “Follow me,” she said.

He ended up back in the white room he’d woken up in.

“Wait, um-” Cecil got out before the door slid shut again.

Great.

She’d be back. They always came back. But he was definitely _not_ looking forward to waiting and worrying in this white room alone with his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter: Our inability to write Cecil as anything but a shitpost


	3. Terminal Velocity III

Two people - or what Cecil assumed were people - in hazmat suits came through the door on what he assumed was the next day. One of them wore nothing else on their white suit. The other wore a belt with pouches of varying sizes. Both their voices came out tinny and hollow through the speakers of the suits.

“Come here,” one of them (the beltless one) said.

“Please,” said the one with the belt, beckoning in what was supposedly a disarming manner.

Cecil brows furrowed, and the two people tensed. “Will you tell me why I’m here?” he asked.

The two faceless masks turned to each other as if they were considering it. Then the belted one addressed Cecil, “Please cooperate. It’ll be easier.”

Just as well. They probably couldn’t hear him, just like that last woman in a lab coat. He didn’t understand _why_ they didn’t want to hear him. People tended to say his voice was calming - dulcet, even. What did his captors have against soothing, sonorous tones? He’d take it personally if he was a lesser person.

Cecil sighed and dropped Carlos’s lab coat so that he could approach his new visitors. They kept him constantly in their lines of sight. Cecil could just feel their gazes boring through the pane of their facemasks.

Cecil was led down indistinguishably dark hallways again. The path took more turns this time, and he was able to reason that the room he ended up in must be a different one from before, despite how visually similar it was.

Just like last time, he was instructed to lay down on the examination table. Just like last time, he refused, only sitting on the edge of it.

“Please cooperate,” repeated the belted one.

“I’d really rather not,” Cecil said to unhearing ears.

The other one cut in, “Lay down or we will have to take additional measures.”

All this time trapped without anyone to talk to, and the three people he'd been allowed to interact with couldn't even hear him. Prisoner or not, he thought, it was rude to expect him to listen while refusing to hear him out whatsoever. But then listening was an invaluable skill, and he knew very well about the importance of listening to others. And gazing into the nonexistent visages of these animate hazmat suits, he knew that importance even more intimately.

Cecil laid down.

The two wasted no time in strapping down Cecil’s wrists and ankles. He saw straps beside his head and worried they were going to use those, too, but the one with the belt had already begun taking out some sort of pen from one of their pouches.

That gave Cecil the freedom to crane his neck and see - _oh god_ \- see the tip of the “pen” was gleaming, malevolent and sharp. It was, in fact, not a pen, but a scalpel, glinting from the belted one’s hand.

Cecil whipped his head back and stared at the ceiling, determined not to look at wherever that scalpel was going. He didn’t do well with blood and gore, both of which that scalpel would undoubtedly bring. His leg involuntarily twitched, and hands grabbed onto it.

Then he heard something rip, and suddenly felt a cold breeze on his right thigh. Startled, he couldn't help but give a quick glance down again to see that the scalpel had cut straight through his pant leg. Cecil felt dread crawl up his guts. He turned to stare at the ceiling once more, willing the whole ordeal to be over soon.

“Alright, start of experiment day two,” he heard a tinny voice say. “On day one, a fellow researcher had discovered the unnatural healing speed of the test subject. This current experiment is designed to test the parameters of the aforementioned healing. I am holding the intended tool for this experiment, a number 10 blade scalpel. The subject is secured on the operating table. Got that?”

“Check.”

“We are starting right now.”

He felt something cold touch the top of his bare thigh. His breath hitched in his throat.

“1cm incision, 0.5cm deep. Right leg, upper thigh.”

“Check.”

The cold touch slid down and bit. Cecil shuddered - it didn’t hurt, not much, but the implications were quite unpleasant. He felt the hands grip his leg harder.

“Would you look at that, it’s already healing up.”

Cecil tried to control his breathing and focus on other things. Counting the tiles in the ceiling had never been harder. He heard a noncommittal sound from the other one, and hoped that they were done, but they showed no sign of stopping. His leg twitched again; the hands on him tightened.

“3cm incision, 2cm under the previous cut.”

“Check.”

He felt the scalpel slide along his leg once more, smelled the coppery tang of blood, and broke into a cold sweat.

“The previous cut is already half-healed, and there is almost no sign of the first one. 5cm incision, 2cm under the previous cut.”

“Check.”

“S-stop,” he blurted out, “stop, wait, I -”

“Hmm. I think we can go deeper this time,” he heard, and he gulped down a breath, closing his eyes. He clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to relax. Panicking wouldn’t help him here.

He attempted to calm down.

He failed miserably as a twinge shot up his leg.

His breath rushed out as he craned his neck again - he needed to get out, _now_. Neck stiff, he slammed his arms upwards, trying to escape, and felt the table shake from under him. His leg jerked out of the restraining hands and he felt the cold metal slice a jagged line across his thigh. Felt the warm blood seeping out. Felt himself bare his teeth, felt his throat make noises - “stop, I t-told you to stop _” -_ felt his Voice burst out - “I want you to _stop_!”

They stopped.

Cecil let out ragged breaths, wide-eyed and staring down at the two figures near his feet. He had honestly not expected this to work. He heard blood dripping down from his leg onto the floor and vaguely wondered who would clean that up. Hopefully, they had an intern to help them up. Even more hopefully, they would do that after they untied him from this table.

The belted one turned towards the other and nodded. The other one turned, and from somewhere he couldn’t see, pulled out a rectangular tablet screen the size of his head. The one with the belt clasped their hands behind their back as the other figure leaned towards him and pressed a button to turn the screen on. And on the screen was -

Cecil suddenly couldn’t breathe.

The screen showed Carlos, his beloved scientist Carlos, alive and well and a little-bit-disheveled-but-in-a-roguishly-handsome-kind-of-way Carlos, _perfect_ Carlos pacing a small room. He was frowning. Cecil frowned with him. Carlos never deserved to frown like that, although it did make him extremely attractive.

Cecil was in the middle of wishing he could rub the stress lines away from his husband’s forehead when the figure snapped the monitor downwards, obscuring his vision of Carlos. He looked up at the figure, offended.

“Wha-” he started, but they cut him off.

“Whatever you just did,” they ground out through their frankly unimpressive speakers. “It set off a blip in our sensors. Do not try that again, or this man gets hurt.” They waved the monitor at him again, where Carlos still was frowning and pacing.

Cecil gaped at them, processing through what they had said.

“Looks like he doesn’t believe you,” the belted one commented.

“Looks like _it_ doesn't believe me,” the non-belted one said.

“Uh-” Cecil said.

The non-belted figure raised their hand, the other hand still holding the screen, Carlos still pacing, and pressed somewhere near their ear.

“It needs a demonstration,” they stated clearly, and Cecil could feel their gaze boring into his eyes. He would have made eye contact, but he saw no eye to make contact with, so he ended up staring at his own reflection from the mask. He looked scared. No, apprehensive. No, that was definitely scared.

And then his eyes were dragged towards a new movement on the screen.

A figure was entering the room; entering through a door that was thrust open, suddenly,and without warning. Carlos was surprised. Cecil could see Carlos tense his shoulders, stop in his tracks, pretend that it was nothing alarming, but Cecil could _see_ that it was.

And then the figure who entered the room reached out to grab Carlos’s arm, and Cecil saw Carlos’s mouth open to voice a protest, and he saw red. The person invading Carlos’s space looked up into the camera and Cecil stared right back, fuming. He tugged angrily at his restraints, shaking the table again.

It took a few more beats for the full implications of this hit him, but when they did… Cecil choked. They could do anything, _anything_ to Carlos, and Cecil would be helpless, unable to do anything to stop it. He felt like shards of ice had splintered into his bloodstream. Suddenly, everything was very, very cold.

“If you both don’t do anything rash, neither of you gets hurt,” a voice ruptured through his stunned silence.

A hand touched his forehead, and he let it push his head back down onto the table.

“I think he got the message.”

There was a hand to their ear again, then a “that would be all for now,” and when Cecil turned his head, he was barely able to see the person in the screen let go of Carlos and walk out of the cell. Carlos, resilient Carlos, rubbed his arms and resumed pacing again.

“Now, I think we can resume our procedure. Subject had caused a deeper cut to himself when he struggled, but it has healed itself enough to staunch the bleeding during the...the 8 minutes since. Hmm. A 15cm incision, 1.5cm deep. Lower thigh.”

“Check.”

Cecil’s leg throbbed, but he took care to hold still and look only at Carlos pacing, pacing in his small room.

 

* * *

 

Carlos was sure that he had explored every single inch of this cell. He had paced along the floor so many times that he was starting to wonder if he had been wearing out the tiles, even though his logical brain told him that it was _highly unlikely._ He was still not eating, so he had stopped pacing once standing up made his head spin.

He knew he should probably start eating soon - especially if that guard was going to keep barging in on him like that the day before. The longer he was trapped here without incident, the more certain he became that they were not going to poison him - why keep him alive and, in the barest meaning of the word, nourished, if they were just going to kill him?

In fact, there was a piece of bread in front of him right now. Carlos avoided looking at it in favor of looking at the door, and the flap that it had slid in through.

Food was served through what he had thought was an indent in the bottom of the door, which slid open upwards to form a hole, then fell back down with a _clink_. Around what he guessed was thirty minutes after a plate was pushed through, the slab slid open again and he had to push the plate out again.  

From what he’d observed until now, the slab was a simple mechanism, with a plate of metal fitted over an opening from the outside so it would slide vertically up and down. It probably had no locking mechanism, as the person inside the door wouldn’t ever get the leverage required to push the small slab up and open.

Or so they thought.

Carlos thought hard as he slowly reached over to the bread and ripped off a small piece. He carefully nibbled on it, and took a sip from the plastic cup provided with the bread - he would need all the strength and concentration he could afford to pull this off.

Still, Carlos waited for a while (probably around 30 minutes, but he wasn’t sure - living where time didn’t behave properly didn’t help his internal clock), waiting for a sign of his limbs going weak, or of sudden dizziness. When nothing came, he flattened himself onto the back wall of his cell and stared at the door, trying to organize his thoughts and making a list of things he would need to do.

For the first time in days, he felt like things could actually work out.

 

* * *

 

Cecil didn’t sleep, which really did not help his problem determining how much time had passed. His leg still smarted, but the bandages around it stopped him from peeking underneath to check how it was doing. Eventually, though, a small, previously invisible panel set into the bottom of the door opened a rectangle into the void and spat out a red, squishy chunk of _something_. The panel shut not a second after.

The _something_ looked alive, living, breathing. Not that it was actually moving, but…

Cecil cautiously inched closer to it.

He found that he’d only been wrong in a temporal sense. Ithad been alive at some point, yes. Now, it was only a lump of dead meat, still warm.

Why had this been tossed in with him?

He didn’t like it. He crawled back into his corner, pulled Carlos’s lab coat around his shoulders, and ignored it.

 

* * *

 

Carlos had complained extensively about how cold it was in the cell.

How could they expect him to tough it out in just a t-shirt, he had yelled at the closed door, at _least_ give him his lab coat back.

They gave him his button up shirt back.

It was a plain baby blue dress shirt, kind of poofy, just the right amount of formal, chosen specifically for the Science convention. As Carlos draped it around his shoulders, he rubbed at the shirt’s collar and gave a sigh of relief. It was not the best at insulation, but it had a small quirk that he desperately hoped had passed unnoticed - as soon as he heard the guard walk away, he huddled against his favorite corner and dug a finger below the soft material of the folded collar. It was awkward and cramped his hand, but he managed to pull the thin wire out by the time the flap on the door slid open to give him his third meal of the day.

Carlos folded and slipped the wire into his palm as he padded towards the door, pretending to be interested in the plate of food - some kind of rice? - while sneaking glances at the flap. It was supposed to be impossible to open from the inside, sure, but Carlos had witnessed multiple impossible things in the past few years. Heck, he was _married_ to an impossible thing. He could figure this out.

He picked at the food until the slab opened once more. As he pushed the plate back through the opening, he laid his palm flat against the floor and slid the piece of wire right under the edge of the plate. He watched from the edge of his sight as the plate was pulled from the other side. The slab dropped with a _clink_ , but a thin line of light shone through the bottom of the opening - the wire had successfully jammed it from closing fully. Carlos paused and listened intensely for any sign of anyone noticing that something was different, but the only thing he heard were trudging footsteps heading away from his cell. He relaxed a little, and then forced himself to focus again.

Shucking his new shirt from off his shoulders, he dug his fingers under the small opening and slid the slab up a little to retrieve the wire from its place. He stuffed his shirt in its place to keep it open - he would need the wire for something else.

Life in Night Vale had taught Carlos many things - life in extreme radiation, Weird Spanish, the correct way to perform first aid for cut off fingers - but the most useful thing that he could have learned was how to pick locks using extremely limited material (he knew for a fact that Cecil could bust open a door using just a sewing kit). He thanked this knowledge as he twisted the thin wire between his fingers and kneeled before the keyhole. There was no way to make this look not suspicious, so he would have to do this as quickly as possible.

His palms were sweaty as he pressed his ear on the door, but he willed his hands not to shake as he fished the wire this way and that, searching for that satisfying click. Push, pull, turn, press, and _there_ -

He didn’t breathe as he slowly reached out with his other hand, hooked several fingers around the edge of the opening held up with his shirt, and _pulled._

The door responded, slowly sliding open to reveal a guard staring at him from outside the door, eyes wide, hand still in midair where he had been starting to unlock the door.

Carlos stared back from his frozen position on the floor.

_Move!!_ his mind screamed at him.

Carlos shot up from the floor and slammed into the chest of the guard. Both of them toppled to the ground, the guard shouting in surprise. Carlos rolled away, but a hand tripped him up and he went sprawling again with a yelp. Immediately, a weight was shoving him down onto the floor and twisting his arms behind him.

“What the _hell,_ ” the guard panted from above his ear, “How the _fuck_.”

Carlos grunted in reply, and was yanked up back onto his feet by the back of his shirt. The guard shoved him back inside the room. He looked around, at the wire and the shirt lying on the ground, then reached back into his belt and slapped a pair of handcuffs around Carlos’s wrists.

Carlos stared at the handcuffs in disbelief. Then he flinched back as he felt something touch his head.

The guard’s hand followed him back, carding through his hair and settling on the back of his neck. He scowled down at Carlos.

“Funny, I thought you cared more about your boyfriend more than this.”

Carlos tensed.

“What?”

The guard gave his neck a small squeeze, then turned to stalk back out of the small cell. He plucked the wire out of the keyhole and kicked the shirt out into the hall. The door slammed shut behind him with a deafening _click_ as it was locked.

Carlos was left alone again in the dark, cold and unnerved by what the guard had said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter: some violence in the form of some light and precise, medical cutting on a living organism


	4. Terminal Velocity IV

Rubbing at the faint rectangle outlined on his thigh caused it, eventually, to fade. This wasn’t the truth, of course. In the time that Cecil had idly traced the lines, his body had simply rid itself of the scar. It was almost like it hadn’t happened. But again, of course this wasn’t the truth.

While his body held no record of their knives, his mind kept everything - from the incisions, to the patches of muscle removed, to the fingers lost. Saying it altogether like that made it sound worse than it was. They never took what Cecil would call an _obscene_ amount (he’d seen that at a different time and place), and they always allowed him to regenerate what was lost before they came back for more. They’d even allowed breaks between each time. All in all, everything had been spread out rather reasonably over-

Over-

He wasn’t sure exactly.

Cecil couldn’t say he had a good sense of time.

In fact, he couldn’t say he had an okay sense of time, or a functioning sense of time at all, really. It was hard to get a sense of something that was usually dysfunctional or absent from your life. Would the white-clothed people be able to have a sense of how many gaping terrors are passing through the sky? No, they would not.

So, Cecil had no idea how long he’d been kept in his room. The distracting tingling in the middle of his forehead - an energy buildup from not being able to See, he assumed - made him even more lost. There existed only two interruptions to the waiting with which he could use as points of time: the surgical invasions and the meat. And he just assumed that the fresh meat was thrown in once every day, hoping he was not too off the mark.

He reached out and poked the slab of raw meat sitting next to him. His finger made a little indent that slowly filled back out. It was cold now, and he was hungry. He wouldn't call himself a glutton by any means, but all this regeneration had been extremely demanding of his metabolism. His cells needed the fuel to put themselves back together, and at first, his stomach had been gnawing at itself, begging him to give in and eat that unappetizing pile of meat who cares where it came from or _what_ it came from just eat it.

Then, he gave in. And then he stopped trying to fight himself as much. That voice, the one borne from years of living in his beloved home, still whispered to him, though. And it did so again, now, as he picked up his only source of food and bit into it.

It warned him of filth, of poison, and of the indistinguishable appearance of human flesh.

 

* * *

 

They started taking his teeth next. Three. The lack of symmetry bothered him more than anything, though the feeling of having his teeth torn from their roots was nothing to shake at. Not that he could’ve shaken anything, tied down as he’d been. This same occasion also brought about something slightly different.

Previously, his captors had avoided his major organs. That changed when they stuck a tube through his abdomen, into his stomach, and took some tissue from there. This time, they also had the decency to put a numbing agent around the area. That was nice of them.

They kept him there, even after they had removed the tube, and watched him. He didn’t know what they looking for, and he’d long given up trying to talk to any of them. So he sat there under their piercing scrutiny, until they stabbed yet another tube in the same spot - stabbed, because the wound had already healed up. Whatever it was they had wanted to accomplished must have been a success because they let him go after that.

He was led back to his room, and ten minutes later, there was yet another slab of meat thrown in for him.

 

* * *

 

They only grew bolder from there. Other organs began to have small samples extracted as well. Again, it was not an _obscene_ amount, by any stretch of the word. But the escalation gave Cecil pause to think about how the cardinal rules of a kidnapping. He thought, specifically, about the Infinite Escalation Principle. That was, were your kidnapper to begin to make things worse, you should reasonably expect it to only ever get worse from then on out. While there might be stages of cool periods for each cycle of escalation, the climax of each cycle would most likely be worse than the last.

Cecil wasn’t too frightened. No, he had the utmost faith (and experiential evidence to support his claims) in his ability to survive no matter how badly his body was treated.

It didn’t make the day when they took a kidney any less unpleasant, however. It’d grow back, but - who in their right mind wants to lose a _kidney_?

 

* * *

 

Cecil began to fear the day they removed both his kidneys, half his liver, and three ounces of each organ from his digestive tract.

They’d grow back, but it’d be slow. He started to feel slow.

 

* * *

 

They cut open his throat, and Cecil no longer could feign his calm. He came back to his cell the first day of that barely able to speak.

Who was he without his voice? _What_ was he without his voice?

 

* * *

 

Each subsequent cut into his throat took longer to recover from.

And then there was the first time they’d rendered him mute. Only a moment, a few seconds, at most. But Cecil had never felt the sort of guilt and emptiness and _grief_ that came with it. It the grief of an entire town, and he couldn’t even offer a simple apology.

Thankfully, even in subsequent times, Cecil would only be Silenced for a few seconds, no matter what they tried. And Cecil could see - they were trying _very_ hard.

It gave him hope that things would be alright, to at least know his Voice could not be taken away.

 

* * *

 

Four days had passed since his last examination, and he had healed completely. He’d healed completely the day before, but there’d not yet been another visit from the white-coated people. He still adamantly refused to call them “lab coats” or “scientists”. That thought made him fancy himself a rebel. That sort of inner-monologue resistance would earn him the ire of the secret police back home. But he _wasn’t_ home anymore.

And he was sure no one back in Night Vale would mind his rebellion here, against these forces unfamiliarly cruel.

He was giddy for a second before he was hit with the realization of how much he missed home and how much he missed _Carlos_. Carlos was fine, Cecil was sure. A scientist was always fine, and Carlos was the best scientist of them all. He was probably already hatching _and enacting_ a brilliant plan to free both of them.

Cecil managed to quell his fears and anxieties for a brief moment, and he enjoyed the peace. Things weren't the best. His regeneration rate for all his organs, save for his voice, had slowed significantly. In general, he felt weak from the amount of strain his body had endured recently. But the white-coated people had not come for him in a whole four days! They probably had stolen enough of his body to make their very own Cecil Palmer and didn't need him anymore- But _four days_! That had to count for something.

At least, he thought it’d been four days. Maybe he'd forgotten a day or two. It wasn't going to kill his mood. Carlos was out there somewhere, figuring something out with his amazing smarts.

All Cecil had to do was wait.

 

* * *

 

The burden of consciousness crashed down onto Cecil in a flurry of pain and blood, and he knew - unbearably - that he was-

“-awake!” shouted a voice above him.

He caught one last glimpse of one of his lungs rapidly inflating and deflating as he wheezed - his frantic heart pounding - a rope of intestines held limply in the air by a gloved hand - before someone roughly forced his head down onto the table and strapped it down. Bright lights floated blurrily far overhead, eclipsed by a rush of arms. And in a sudden, his whole world - the lights, the masked faces, the blood, the pain, the yelling - blacked out.

It faded up to grey. Muffled voices cursed and said words like “too risky”, “give”, “more.”

He sucked in a breath, but it never hit home.

“Fine… fine.”

And the fog lifted completely. The light in the ceiling now pierced through the back of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut to let them adjust.

When he opened them, everything became so clear - _he had no idea where he was._

He parted his chapped lips to at least say _something_ , but nothing came out. His voice was gone. In its place was a hollow noise and the obtrusive solidity of metal. He waited a few seconds. It should come back soon, as it always did.

It always-

It didn’t. It wasn’t coming back. He tried. Again and again and again. And nothing. Nothing. They’d taken his voice. The speech from his tongue.

And what were they taking now?

_The beating from his heart_?

They wouldn’t-

They couldn’t-

Because-

_Because_ -

There was a reason there, he was sure. There _had_ to be a reason. If there wasn’t a reason, then that meant…

He was going to die. Here, under these blinding lights. Here, away from Carlos.

Carlos- Carlos was going to be alone.

Here.

Somewhere.

He didn’t know, under the pain - shocking across his torso - currents branching down his limbs - pulsing along every other heartbeat. (He’d seen, before he’d passed out, his organs crowded amongst themselves in the cavity of his body, ribs neatly sawn off.)

He opened his mouth again - tell them “ _stop_ ” or “ _wait_ ” but again. Nothing.

He couldn’t do anything. Here, weakly pulling the ungiving straps, eyes darting around to get some sort of answer - get someone to see that _please, he couldn’t die like this_.

Adrenaline, trapped, bubbled into nausea in whatever was left of his stomach.

The voice, calmer now, now that Cecil’s helplessness was evident to them as much as to himself, monotonously read off a list that he couldn’t clearly make out. Sometimes, when an item was declared, a new, sharp pain sliced across somewhere he couldn’t see, and he’d feel something lost. Other times that items were declared, there was no new pain save for the already constant scream of his nerve endings, but still something was clearly lost.

He couldn’t do anything, but wait until there was nothing left to lose.

Like always. Always, he was useless.

But there came no end, only a blessed after, which arrived when he could feel the telltale prick of a needle rhythmically sealing him back up.

God, he felt-

Empty.

Empty, but alive.

If he strained his eyes to look left, carts could be seen, loaded with labeled, bloody containers and rolled off elsewhere. He didn't have the energy to even look over there that long. Just a few seconds was enough to know he was being harvested like a corpse, though. He didn't need any longer.

But unlike a corpse, he could not sleep, not in the face of the unending amount of pain that all but made up his body. Through the haze, he wondered if corpses were also sleepless, if death was an eternity of pain trapped in a body as it decayed around you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional Warnings for This Chapter: Depiction of dismemberment and terrible unethical surgical practices
> 
> Also hey :> if anyone wants to chat or see concept art (that is highkey buried away under other posts), visit our tumblrs ovo/ thisriverdraws.tumblr.com (swiftriver) and lillirii.tumblr.com (nivu_vu, maybe i should start using tumblr again).


	5. Terminal Velocity V

Cecil pulled Carlos’s lab coat tight around himself. It’d been three days since his most recent visit to the examination table - three meals sitting cold and forgotten by the door. And yet, when he opened his mouth, still nothing came out.

He reached up to scratch under the edge of the bandages around his neck but hesitated. He couldn’t risk damaging it anymore. He could feel that Thing digging into his throat every time he swallowed.

Blood dripped down from his shirt and onto the ground. He knew, without needing to see, that it would have come from his throat, dark blood staining and saturating the bandages. His scout training in blood pattern analysis was really paying off.

After however many tries, across an unknowable stretch of time, they’d done it somehow - they’d removed his voice. Somehow, Cecil thought, but he knew how throats worked - everyone knew that. It was a mass of muscles and goop and existential dread, but he wasn’t a scientist. If Carlos was here, he probably would have told Cecil exactly what they had done, how they had done, and why-

But then, that part he had already figured out on his own; fear was something he was familiar with, after all. He felt it now, as for the first time in his life, he lost his voice.

Deeply, he understood.

They were afraid of his voice. They feared his Voice. And he feared them.

Cecil hummed, or tried to, and heard air wheeze out of his throat like the last sound of a dying spiderwolf. This was, in his humble opinion, overkill. He wouldn’t do anything that could end up harming Carlos. He would never.

He just hoped they wouldn’t decide to hurt Carlos nonetheless.

Blood dripped down onto the ground.

He glanced down, and rubbed his finger through it, smearing a line on the otherwise white tiles.

It felt a little illegal, a little rebellious, messing up pristineness like this. More blood dripped onto the ground and he rubbed those across the ground as well.

_Take that_ , he thought, moving his finger a little bit too vindictively.

He drew a little smiley face on the ground :). And then a little frowny face, because he knew the dangerous power of smiles :(. The mouth of the frown made him think of the letter ‘C’, and everyone knew what that letter reminds him of.

Cecil wrote his favorite name onto the white tiles and couldn’t help his mouth turning up into a smile. He missed Carlos, so much. Trying to whisper out his name only resulted in the Thing digging fresh wounds into his larynx and making him cough.

He reached up with his fingers and touched his mouth. They came back speckled with blood. He rubbed his fingers together, mind going blank as he just watched the blood spread across his fingers. He imagined the blood rising, crawling up, and up, and covering his arms, his neck, his face, until all that was left was his eyes and his mouth, staring, gasping up, into the empty void. Never seen, never heard of again.

Cecil felt his head hit the wall and jerked back to his senses. He had been leaning backwards, looking up at - the bright blank ceiling. Why had he been doing that?

He blinked several times, trying to clear his head.

A sigh escaped between his teeth. It was getting hard to remember things again. Carlos could always help him out. He missed Carlos.

 

* * *

 

Three weeks into captivity, Carlos had a routine set up.

Or rather, they had a routine set up for him, and he had no choice but to follow. But Carlos felt better if he thought that he had a little control over the situation.

So he had a routine set up. Three meals a day, bathroom breaks an hour after each meal. After the third bathroom break, he huddled in the far corner from the door and went over the information he had gathered about the facility - the fact that there seemed to be specific guards assigned to him, the lengths of the hallways, the pattern of the meals - before he eventually fell asleep. The location allowed him to simultaneously stay under what he figured was the blind spot of the camera blinking above him, and keep the door in his line of sight.

The handcuffs were more annoying than anything, but he learned to plan around it.

So when the guard, who had brought him to the bathroom after the second meal of the day, stopped and looked at him with his head cocked instead of briskly leading him out as usual, Carlos was thrown for a loop. He tensed where he was still standing in the middle of the small room, rubbing his wrists self consciously.

“You,” the guard said, “you need to be cleaned up.”

Carlos frowned. This wasn’t part of the routine. The guard was still standing there, looking at him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Carlos said. The guard leaned against the doorframe and signaled him forward with a twitch of his fingers.

Really? Carlos thought. He refused to move from his spot and clasped his hands together. He could see the guard roll his eyes. It took all his self control not to flinch back as the guard stalked forward and grabbed his arm again.

“Do what you’re told,” he snapped at Carlos, and shoved him face first against the wall. Carlos tried to twist away, but the guard pressed harder against his shoulders, barking, “Hold still!” His voice bounced off the walls of the cramped room.

Carlos breathed hard as his face was mashed into the hard tiles. His glasses dug into the bridge of his nose. He really did not want to know what the guard was planning - someone must be hearing this commotion, right?

There was a fumbling sound, then suddenly something cold and thin was being pressed against the nape of his neck.

Carlos froze. He hardly dared to breathe.

“Wh-what are you doing?” he stammered.

The guard didn’t say anything. Carlos’s yelp echoed around the small bathroom as the the guard let go of his shoulder, grabbed a fistful of his hair instead, and yanked it upwards. There was a _shnik_ as the cold pressure slid upwards, and the grip on his hair was gone.

No, that was not entirely correct.

The grip was gone, yes, but a section of his hair was gone with it. Carlos felt the cold air hit the back of his neck for the first time in years and tried to squirm away, but the guard pressed his elbow painfully into the small of his back.

The guard didn’t let him go until he was satisfied with the results, his knife dancing dangerously close to Carlos’s scalp.

The moment the pressure pinning him to the wall was gone, Carlos whipped around, stumbling far away from the guard as possible. His hands flew up to feel at his hair. It was tragically shorn too short with only a few inches to spare.

_What the hell??_ he thought. What came out of his mouth was, “You better not let my boyfriend know about this.”

The guard scowled - an interesting reaction - and stepped closer to him, swinging his knife up towards his face. He reached up and almost gently eased Carlos’s glasses off his nose.

“Now don’t move, or this could actually take your eye out.”

 

* * *

 

Carlos anxiously twisted his wrists around in his handcuffs as the knife moved across his face. Anything to stop himself from thinking too hard about the blade currently scraping across his cheekbones.

His cuffs were not those thin rings of metal that he’d often see in Night Vale, slapped onto the wrists and other appendages of the people who’s committed a minor crime and/or created disturbances. Sometimes the secret police would just use them on someone for laughs, but that was a whole different story.

Instead, these was thicker, heavier and more clunky, implying that they did more than just hold his hands in place. This also made it harder for him to figure out its locking mechanism. This would usually be discouraging for an escaping prisoner, but the heaviness was exactly what he needed.

When the guard pressed his glasses back onto his face, looking satisfied, Carlos asked if he could go wash his face at the sink. He said he wanted to clean himself up, which wasn’t technically a lie. He could still feel little bits of hair poking at his skin from where it fell under his shirt.

Using the sink with handcuffs on was a tricky thing. He wet his hands and rubbed his face, staring at himself in the mirror and discreetly psyching himself up.

Carlos’s reflection really drove home that he was, so to speak, in a sticky situation. His hair now barely framed his face anymore, and the stubble that had been accumulating over the times, gone. There were bags under his eyes, and little stinging cuts around his cheek where the guard hadn’t been careful enough. Or maybe he did that on purpose, Carlos wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to know.

After fumbling with the tap for a while, he gave up on twisting the knobs as tight as possible and sighed, loudly. Deliberately. He stood in front of the basin and laid down a map of the floor in his mind, recalled the guard’s reactions.

He could hear the guard walking towards him, and clasped his fingers together.

“So,” he started before the guard could reach him. “When were you planning to tell me about what you’re doing to Ce-my _boyfriend_?”

The distraction worked. The footsteps faltered, and he could see the guard frown through the mirror set into the wall in front of him. That one moment of hesitation was all that he was waiting for.

He tensed his shoulders and, glancing again to the mirror for aim, swung around to slam his fists into the guard’s nose, handcuff-first. He felt something give.

The guard let out a shout of pain, then stumbled back a couple of steps. Carlos - making sure not to repeat his first mistake - danced out of the way of his groping hands and sprinted out the door.

He skidded into the hallway and turned right. And then a left - no, that would only take him back to his cell, and that was the last place Carlos wanted to be right now. He decided to brave unknown waters and jerked to the right.

Again, the hallway he was running through was filled with locked doors and dirty glasses. All of them were empty. Carlos involuntarily shivered as he wondered what exactly had happened to the last people who were in there.

He turned the corner, breathing hard, and - ran smack into someone’s chest. All his breath whooshed out, and he looked up to see yet another guard.

“Um,” he stammered, taking several steps back, “th-there’s a very scientific and logical explanation behind this-”

The guard - a different one from the one assigned to him, currently advancing behind him with a red smear across his face - sneered down at him, matching him step by step.

“Looks like somebody’s lost his handler,” the guard said, shoving him towards the other guard.

Arms grabbed Carlos’s shoulders and wound around his neck, holding him in a headlock. He scrabbled at them, but they tightened until he was wheezing. He felt his face turn red.

“Are you fucking serious,” the guard muttered as he dragged Carlos back to his cell ( _left and left, right_ ). “Really?”

There was a scoff from behind him.

“I’ll go get the zinger,” it said, “Looks like you’re gonna need it.”

“I swear to god, if he pulls this off again-” he gave Carlos a jostle, making him cough.

Carlos was tossed back into the room, still coughing and rubbing at his throat. The door slammed and locked behind him, but he wasn’t about to stop now. Right before he was caught again, he had spotted a pair of smooth rectangular doors placed together, something different, set into the wall. _That_ , Carlos thought. _That could be it_.

Trying to even out his breathing, he took position on the wall behind the door, waiting. Exact timing was key. The door, he had noticed, didn’t lock itself. So if he timed this right-

There was a rattling of the locks, and the door creaked open. Carlos braced himself on the wall.

“Hey, a little present for your pret-”

Carlos’s leg snapped out, slamming the door shut on whoever was talking. It bounced back open, and he shot forward, leaping past the cursing guard and a strange, ring-shaped device on the floor, and sprinted straight for the door he had seen.

By the time he got there, he was panting and out of breath, his body clamoring in protest. However, his heart was thumping, making him dizzy with excitement. The smooth doors were, in fact, what seemed like elevator doors. He could see the seams and the parts that would part to let people in and out of the vehicle, and snuck a furtive glance behind his shoulder to check for any guards - so far, nobody had followed him. Carlos’s gaze snapped back to the elevator in front of him and started looking for something to make it move.

However, try as he might, Carlos just couldn’t find anything that controlled the doors. He looked around them, ran his fingers along the walls, even checked other nearby hallways. Nothing. In his desperation, he even tried to jam his fingers between the two slabs, trying to open them, but they didn’t even budge.

Someone cleared their throat from behind him.

“You done yet?” they drawled.

Carlos squeezed his eyes shut and counted to three, trying to calm down.

When he turned around, he saw the guard he had slammed the door into leaning against the wall across the hallway, rubbing at his cheekbone. He held the round device in his other hand.

“No,” Carlos couldn’t stop himself from saying, “maybe it wasn’t clear, but I’m trying to open this thing-”

The guard rolled his eyes and stalked towards him. Carlos took a step back and ran into the wall.

The hand that was on the guard’s face shot forward and grabbed a fistful of Carlos’s hair ( _“Ow! Hey!”_ ) and yanked backwards, exposing his throat. Carlos felt something snap around his neck, then his head was forced down as the guard leaned to examine the back of it. Finally, his hair was released.

“What is _with_ everyone and my hair?” he muttered as he rubbed his scalp. He let his hands trail down to feel at his neck, where a foreign device was fastened. A collar, his mind supplied unhelpfully. He swallowed, and he felt it move with his adam’s apple.

The guard grinned and threw an arm over his shoulders. Carlos tensed but didn’t bother trying to pull away.

“Good boy,” the guard sneered, and led him back in a brisk pace. “Maybe if you behave, they’ll let you have a ball to play with.”

Carlos rolled his eyes but kept quiet, fingers trying to work out just how the collar was locked around his neck.

“Now be careful,” The guard tutted as he herded Carlos back into his cell. “Any future stunts might bring more serious consequences.”

The door boomed shut behind him.

Once again trapped and with another device fastened on him, Carlos let himself slump down against the floor. But he still held hope - he learned something new that day, an actual elevator. Escape seemed almost within reach.

As usual, he hoped Cecil was alright before he let his mind go blank. He felt the metal ring dig into his throat.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter: Carlos getting his hair cut :C


	6. Terminal Velocity VI

Carlos spent the whole night making plans, revising them, and making more plans until he felt he had a Scientifically high chance of creating a successful escape attempt before he could finally fall asleep.

It was a different guard that came for him the next day. Well, clarification: It was a different guard from his usual one, but it was still someone Carlos had seen before.

“Hey there, pup,” he said, and yes, this was definitely the guard from yesterday. He leaned against the door and crooked a finger at Carlos. “Come on, you got a different handler for today.”

Carlos forced himself to stand up, and warily approached the door. This guard made no move to grab him as Carlos moved past him and into the hallway.

_This,_ he thought as he eyed the open hallway stretching on both sides of him. _This is too convenient._ He could almost feel the guard’s sneer peppering the back of his head, daring him to try and run.

Carlos took a deep breath, drew himself up to his full height, and started walking down the hallway towards where he knew the bathroom was located. He had backup plans. He could gather some information first. Besides, he knew how to reach the elevator doors from the bathroom as well.

There was laughter from behind him, and footsteps as the guard followed him along.

“Good boy,” he heard the guard say, and gritted his teeth. “As a reward, how ‘bout I tell you something. Positive reinforcement, you know?”

Carlos shot a glance behind his shoulder to the guard. He was sauntering behind him, grinning and spinning some kind of remote around his fingers. The guard noticed Carlos’s glance and his grin grew even bigger. He pocketed the remote.

“Yeah, I see you’re interested,” he said, and Carlos turned back to stare in front of him. “You just can’t help it, can you? Little scientists running around in little lab coats, trying to find out about _everything_. But you don’t know anything, do you? No you don’t. If you did, then you would have started _behaving_ much sooner.”

“What do you want,” Carlos ground out as he turned a corner. He heard the guard follow.

“Your boyfriend,” the guard announced, “is in another castle.”

Carlos stopped short.

“ _What_.”

The guard walked around him and stood, leaning on the wall in front of him. He tapped his lips with his fingers.

“Or maybe _you’re_ the princess in this situation,” he sneered down at him. “And there isn’t anyone to pull you out, because a certain Cecil Gershwin Palmer is trapped right here too. You’re the leverage, so _behave_ , and nobody gets hurt…worse.”

Carlos scowled. He didn’t bother mentioning how the _Mario_ reference didn’t actually make any sense if Cecil was actually in the same building as him. He focused instead on how the guard knew Cecil’s full name. Carlos was almost certain that he’d never mentioned Cecil’s name, let alone his _full_ name. How much did they know?

He hoped this (obnoxiously) talkative guard would keep living up to the adjectives Carlos had just slapped onto him. More talking meant more tidbits of what they knew slipping out. He could… stomach the unfortunate things that were being said.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

The guard raised an eyebrow.

“ _That’s_ what you thought up to keep me quiet?”

Carlos made a show of brushing past the guard. That position allowed him to hide the fact that he was calculating the possibilities that that could be true, the possibilities that Cecil _could_ be somewhere near, that what he was doing would affect Cecil -

“You don’t sound convinced,” the guard commented from behind him.

“Would you be?” he shot back. There was a snort.

“You’re a dumbass,” the guard said.

Carlos looked back to see that the guard had stopped several feet away from him, still leaning on the his place on the wall. Carlos stopped as well, suspicious. This was not routine.

“What are you doing?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“You think I’m lying to you? That I’m not telling the truth?” the guard said, still not moving an inch.

“That’s the general definition of lying, yes,” Carlos said.

“You want more proof.”

It was not a question.

When Carlos didn’t answer, the guard gave a mock sigh and reached into his jacket and pulled out - a rectangular card. It was black and featureless as the rest of their uniforms, and had a neckband attached to it.

“Your precious boyfriend,” he started, “is being kept in the lower floors of this facility. You can get there by taking that elevator you were looking at yesterday. And, to get those elevators to work, you would need this.” He tapped the card on his forehead. “You just tag this on the panel next to it and you’d be on your way to see him in no time.”

Carlos eyed the card warily. The guard followed his gaze and smirked. He then reached out and dropped the ID card on the ground. It landed with a clatter by his foot, and the guard kicked it closer to Carlos. Carlos stared.

“Come get it, Mr. Scientist, I dare you. It’s waiting.”

Carlos clenched his fists. He was itching to go closer and grab it, but something about the whole situation made him hesitate.

“What’s the catch?” he asked.

“The catch,” the guard drawled, “is that I am bored. The whole floor is empty except you. So why don’t we play a game, yeah? If you reach that card before I can stop you, I’ll let you use it to go see your friend.”

Carlos glanced at the ID card on the floor. It glinted at him, five feet away.

“What’s wrong?” he heard, “what’s there to lose?”

_He may be lying,_ his mind supplied. _But what if he’s not?_

“I don’t have all day, science man.”

Carlos took one step towards the card, and glanced up to gauge the guard’s reaction. He hadn’t moved an inch. His grin was predatory as he gestured towards the card with his chin.

Carlos took another step towards it. His entire night of planning his escape evaporated in the face of this opportunity. His hands were itching to just grab it and run but his mind was a jumble of _what if this was a trap?_ _What if the card does nothing, what if it’s all a joke, what if -_

_But what if it works?_

He took another step - he expected the guard’s foot to come down on the card any second. The card was just within reach now, if he just bent down a bit -

He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. His hands jerked forward instantly, towards the black rectangle. His gaze snapped towards the movement, to the guard’s hand pulling something out of his pocket.

His first thought was, _oh shit it’s a gun._

And then it was, _I’m not gonna make it._

Then it was, _oh that’s not a gun._

And then his neck was on fire, and he collapsed on the ground with every single one of his muscles contracting. He was shouting, shoulders tensed up, driving his forehead into the ground, but he couldn’t make it relax, couldn’t stop himself from shaking, couldn’t breathe in, his breath leaving his lungs in bursts.

And then it stopped.

Carlos dragged in a huge breath and hacked out coughs, his hands flying to grasp at his neck. They were still shaking in sporadic bursts, his arms too weak to support him as he lay there, gasping, trying to figure out what happened.

The guard crouched down in front of him. He was grinning down at Carlos, holding a remote in one hand.

“Oops, looks like you lost,” he said, rocking back and forth on the tip of his toes.

“Shock collar,” Carlos spluttered out, “you cheated.”

The guard’s smile only grew wider. He reached out and mussed Carlos’s hair.

“Aww, did I make the little scientist angry?” he cooed, making Carlos scowl. The guard laughed. “Look at you, you’re actually mad! I can’t - hey!”

Carlos’s hands shot out to make a grab at the card inches away from his face, but the guard simply made it skid away with a swift kick. The hand in his hair tightened.

“Oops,” Carlos ground out through gritted teeth.

The guard narrowed his eyes at him, let go of his hair, and stood up. And then all Carlos could do for the next few seconds was gasp and spasm on the floor as sparks ran through his body again.

And then it stopped. The remote clattered down next to his head.

“ _Oops,_ ” he heard.  

The guard slammed his foot down on the remote.

Time slowed down to a stop as every one of his senses zeroed in on the burning, his shoulders- his whole body was burning. Carlos wasn’t even sure if he was screaming, or if his throat felt raw because of , of - his train of thought petered out as it _hurt_ , he couldn’t focus, and it went on, and on, and on, and-

And then it stopped.

Carlos wheezed in pain, raising his shaking head to see his usual guard with his bandaged nose shoving the smirking guard away, away from the remote control. He heard the guards yelling at each other, how they were “not supposed to hurt him,” or “stop fucking around,” or that he “didn’t let you take over for this?”

His shoulders spasmed, jostling his head and moving his gaze to - to the ID card. It glinted at him from two feet away.

The guards were still shouting, and he - he had to get it.

He grunted and tried to raise himself to his elbows, but slipped and fell onto the floor again, hissing as his muscles protested against the movement. Changing tactics, he anchored himself with his legs and stretched his arms forward, his hands aching, crawling along the floor towards that small slab of plastic. He was almost there, he could see it, his fingers shaking as it reached out, just inches from the card.

A foot came down on his hand, making him cry out.

It was his usual guard who pulled him up to his feet. Carlos slumped against the wall, his whole body aching, as the guard stared him down.

“You really don’t stop, do you?” his guard asked. Carlos didn’t bother replying. Instead, he watched warily as the other guard approached him again, remote held in hand and ID card slipped around his neck.

“That was fun, pup,” he said. He sported a split lip now, Carlos noted. The guard noticed his gaze and smirked, rubbing the blood off his mouth with a thumb. Carlos’s guard shoved him away, and he waved at Carlos as he walked away, hands in his pockets.

His guard grabbed him by the back of his neck and pushed him, not back towards his cell as he expected him to, but forwards, towards the elevator.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” The guard muttered in his ear as they stopped in front of the ungiving metal doors. Carlos didn’t reply, all his focus on not collapsing. But still, his mind whirled. Why were they leading him up? _What was the catch?_

The guard reached in his jacket with his free hand and pulled out a painfully familiar black card. He reached over and touched it to a subtle rectangular plate inlaid into the wall beside the elevator doors. Carlos heard a soft beep as the card registered.

So the obnoxious one was telling the truth. Carlos cursed internally. He should have known there was something like this, but the plate was so smoothly embedded that it would have been impossible for him to notice it in his frantic state the day before.

The elevator doors slid open, smoothly, soundlessly, and Carlos was stumbling in. The guard shoved him into a corner, where he leaned heavily onto the wall. His feet were not ready to support him yet. The guard reached over towards the floor select panel and pushed a single unmarked button, and the doors slid closed just as smoothly as it had opened.

Then the elevator started moving, and it moved downwards.

It moved down.

Carlos’s heart leapt up, which was not actually happening relative to the earth’s crust, because he was moving down, not up. _And the guard had said Cecil was down._

“Where-where are we going?” he managed to get out, trying to hide his _maybe_ hope. The guard turned to shoot a scowl towards him.

“They,” the guard jerked his chin towards the ceiling at that, perhaps meaning that ‘they’ were metaphorically in a higher status than him, or that ‘they’ are currently physically higher than him, “they decided that you might need a better room in the near future.”

Carlos frowned, eyebrows knitting together. So they were probably not taking him to Cecil after all. But they were taking him to a cell that was nearer to Cecil, so maybe somewhere that’s kept in higher security? Maybe they had decided that he was more of a security risk than they had previously assumed. Carlos felt a stab of grim satisfaction at that. Yeah, he didn’t look like much (despite what Cecil constantly assured him), but he could still prove to be resourceful and slippery if he wanted to. And he very much wanted to.

The elevator slowed to a stop, and the guard marched him out, pulling him along the corridor by the chain on Carlos’s cuffs. Based on the time they spent in the elevator, which was around 18 seconds, they would have probably moved 15-30 meters, depending on how fast the elevator was. That was...deeper than he had originally thought this building would reach down to. Just how big was this organization?

The corridor that lead from the elevator was just as plain as the one his last cell was located in, but the air itself seemed more oppressive. Carlos could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickle, and he drew his shoulders up even higher. Years of living in Night Vale had taught him to trust his gut feelings - and his gut was yelling at him to run, that this place was dangerous.

But his legs were still too shaky to run, and the guard had already shoved open a plain metal door at one end of the corridor ( _turn left at the elevator, then straight, then right, right again…_ ) and was leading him in.

The room was a bit larger than his last, with an actual sink and toilet built into a section of the wall. He stared at them, dread pooling in his stomach, knowing that it meant that they won’t be taking him out for bathroom breaks anymore. On the other wall was a small cot made out of metal and a flimsy mattress.

Carlos yelped as the guard pulled him closer to the cot with a particularly hard yank, reeling onto his knees with a grunt when the force proved too much for his already unstable legs.

The guard pulled out a key from a pocket and unlocked one of the cuffs, looped it around one of the metal railings of the bed, and snapped it back on his wrist.

Carlos stared at his hands, then twisted to look at the guard.

“You do agree this is overkill, right?”

“Don’t worry. You won’t stay like that for too long,” the guard told him, then turned to stalk out of the cell. Carlos couldn’t turn far enough to keep him in his line of vision, but he heard the guard’s footsteps stomp out, then a door slam shut.

He was alone.

 

* * *

By the time the door slammed open again, Carlos’s shoulders were getting cramped from being held up in an awkward position for so long. He was cold and exhausted and still sore from the collar, and his wrists were getting red and swollen where they rubbed against the manacles when he pulled at it. Still, he made an effort to twist his head back and glare up at the people approaching him. He knew that they couldn't kill him - he was only valuable as a leverage when he was alive. They could rough him up, maybe, but he would heal and be plotting an escape again soon enough. The bed was heavy but still movable, and there was something nagging at him about the walls, which he couldn’t quite figure out yet.

The two guards were both here, he noted. One of them stopped at the door, blocking the light that was filtering in. The other approached him, pulling out a key from his belt. He crouched down, unlocked one of the handcuffs that looped around the water pipe, and yanked Carlos to his feet by his shirt.

“Come on, pretty boy. Someone wants to have a long talk with you,” the guard sneered at him, and shoved him towards the door. Carlos could see the beginning of a bruise forming around his cheekbone and the split lip - ah, so this was the one whose face he had smashed the door closed on. The gross one.

Carlos grunted in reply, trying to shake the pins-and-needles feeling in his feet as he stumbled forward. While his left hand was still attached to the handcuff, they were not bound together anymore. He _had_ to try something while he had the chance.

The other guard - his usual one - chose to step forward at that moment and grab his arm.

“No, you don’t. Not this time,” the guard growled.

The more annoying one stepped up from behind him and grabbed his other arm. And they dragged Carlos down yet another hallway he had never seen before.

Carlos took a deep breath to ground himself and started counting the steps and the turns they took. He was a Scientist, and sometimes Scientists had to know when to lay low and bide their time. Left, left, right, right again, left, right, and -

And suddenly he was being shoved into a room and onto a metal chair that had something that looked too much like bloodstains on its legs for comfort. The door crashed shut behind him, and the room fell into darkness, only lit by a spotlight that shone directly into his eyes.

_Classic intimidation tactic,_ he thought. _There’s a reason it’s a classic,_ he also thought. _I’m scared,_ he tried not to think.

“Carlos the Scientist,” a voice called out suddenly from beyond the light, making him jump. “I must say, we were quite impressed. Four almost-successful attempts to escape in two weeks.”

Carlos squinted against the brightness, trying to see more of what was going on.

Without any kind of warning, hands sprouted from the darkness and held down his arms to the armrests of the chair. Carlos cried out and tried to struggle against them, but their grip was too strong. Soon enough, his arms were bound to the cold metal with thick leather straps.

“Cecil’s been asking about you - we told him that you were being flighty. Using up our time that could have been spent doing...something else.”

Carlos could only squirm and watch as the hands then latched onto his legs, tying his knees together and his left leg to the chair.

“I believe that we have already warned you, Carlos, that the next time you wasted our time trying to run, there would be consequences.”

Carlos gathered up his courage and let out a shaky scoff.

“You don’t intimidate me, what use would I be to you if I got damaged?”

“Oh, believe me, you don’t want to know.”

There was a sound of footsteps, and a figure revealed himself into the light. Something about him was vaguely familiar, but try as he might, Carlos couldn’t figure out how he knew the man.

The man stepped closer to Carlos and placed a hand on his cheek. Carlos tried to flinch back, but the headrest stopped him from going any further.

The hand turned his head this way and that, and the man let out a _tsk_ , as if he was disappointed in what he saw.

“Such a waste.”

He swung his hand back, and slapped him hard. Carlos’s head snapped to his right, and he could only gasp as his head slammed back into the headrest. His glasses flew off his face and he could hear a _crunch_ as someone stepped on it.

“I hope this will teach you to be more compliant in the future.”

Then the man turned away and walked out of his line of sight, and Carlos was blinded again by the light. The whole left side of his face burned and he couldn’t see, but he could handle this. He could grit his teeth and plow through, he could handle pain. He will get past this and find out a way to save himself, and Cecil. After all, a Scientist was -

was -

was that a sledgehammer -

Someone else was walking towards him, holding a wood block and a _goddamn_ sledgehammer and now Carlos felt like something was going terribly wrong. He had to get _out_ , right now.

He tugged frantically at his arms, but they wouldn’t budge.

“Wait, we- we can talk about this,” he gasped out, still struggling. The other person kneeled down now and reached for his right foot. Carlos kicked, but they simply caught his foot in midair and, putting the wood block between his ankles, tied it to his other leg with leather straps.

Carlos was breathing fast. _This was not supposed to happen_. He could feel sweat trickling down his hairline, and clenched his fists. The leather straps bit into his arms as he yanked on them again. And again.

“ _Please,_ I-”

“At least give him something to bite onto,” the voice cut in. Carlos felt someone shove a strip of cloth between his teeth and tie it around his head, but he could only stare at the person in front of him, who had straightened up and taken a step back, adjusting their grip on the hammer.

“Hmm,” the voice called out from the shadows. “Two strikes seemed to produce the most reliable results.”

The person nodded, and hefted the sledgehammer onto their shoulder.

Carlos couldn't breathe. He couldn’t move. He watched in slow motion as the sledgehammer was raised up high, and began to start its downward motion. _Potential energy is being used to help accelerate the mass_ , his brain provided. _Pressure is force divided by area,_ it said. _Force is mass times acceleration, torque is force times radius, and this is going to hurt like hell,_ it said. _That person is left handed,_ it concluded.

The sledgehammer slammed into his right leg. He felt something snap.

Carlos screamed.

And the world exploded into a flurry of movement again.

Carlos spasmed in the limited space his restraints allowed him. His head snapped back into the headrest and he saw stars burst in front of his eyes. His jaw had clenched against the gag and it _hurt,_ oh god it hurt so much. His whole body hurt, but his leg was burning, tearing apart right above his ankle. He heard a high keening sound and realized it was coming from his throat. Carlos couldn’t take it, he -

The sledgehammer rammed into his leg once more.

Carlos blacked out for a moment, and was dragged back by the pain. He was crying, tears and spit dribbling down his face as he slumped forward. He tasted blood. A moan escaped around the gag, and he dragged back a huge breath and let it out in a sob. He did not dare look at his leg. He couldn’t. Couldn’t bear to comprehend what this would mean for him. And Cecil, oh _Cecil_ -

Someone was leaning down to examine his leg. Carlos squeezed his eyes closed and tried to count to ten, but the numbers refused to come. _T-ten...nine…seven...no, e-eight…_

Someone was untying his arms and legs as someone was grabbing him by the hair and pulling his head back. Carlos whimpered, blearily staring at the face in front of him. It was the vaguely familiar man. The man gently pried the piece of cloth out of Carlos’s mouth. It was soaked with his own spit and left a long line of bloody saliva connecting it to his bottom lip. The man dropped it onto the ground next to him, and smiled at Carlos.

“Now you be more careful next time, alright?”

The man reached down, and pushed Carlos’s glasses back on his nose. Both lenses were badly cracked. He patted Carlos’s hair.

“Now wait patiently and we’ll send you a friend to patch you up.”

A wheezing sound slipped out of Carlos’s mouth as the two guards grabbed his arms from either side of him and dragged him off the chair and into the hallway. Each step they took jostled his leg and he could feel the pieces of bone rubbing against each other and he was crying again, broken sobs trailing behind him as surely as a trail of blood, and he should have been taking note of where exactly they were taking him but he couldn’t focus and, _and_ -

He was back to the room where he started, dingy gray with a bare bathroom on the side. He crumpled to the floor in the middle of the room, curling in on himself, trying not to move as moving hurt. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt.

And for the first time since he was trapped in this facility, Carlos let himself cry. (He could gather himself and start planning again in a few hours.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> electrical torture and bones break


End file.
